Wednesday 2nd July

Day 1 with Jackie Chant.

The morning started with Jackie introducing herself and telling us about how she got into Parelli and all about her horses, it was very interesting. We then all told Jackie a little bit about ourselves and our ponies and what stage in the programme we were at and what we would like to work on over the next 5 days.

Jackie talked about phases with us – 1.Teaching Phase (long phases, 3 seconds between each phase) 2. Controlling Phase (Quick Blocks, matching there level of energy) 3. Reinforcing Phase (1 ounce in the rien, 2 ounces in your leg and 4 ounces of rhythmic pressure) 4. refining Phase.

We then went and got the horses and headed out to the playpark, we were just to mosey round with our horses to start with to find out where the thresholds were and so we can learn to mirror them better. Once we felt out horses where relaxed, we could then start playing with the obstacles at the level we were all working on. I just played about with everything working out what thresholds Blossom had today – but most things were going quite well.
We finished the morning with having a quick chat about our horses and what we found out from them when we first brought them out, did they have thresholds and if they did how did we help them overcome them. It was very interesting to hear from everybody as I think we had horses that were all different horsenality which made it interesting to hear what people done different to help the different horsenality.

We all met after lunch back in the playfield with horses and settled the horse in using the games we know will help our horses to become relaxed.
The session was on the purpose games – we started with playing with yo yo using the driving game to help us get the backwards movement. Blossom had problems staying straight when going backwards, so Jackie got me to block zone one and direct the HQ from zone one, instead of moving zone 4 to get her straight. This really seemed to help but I still seemed to be having problems getting Blossom to relax and go backwards. So Jackie had a play with her and had to get really firm with her as she actually became very left brained and dominant, instead of her usual right brained behaviour. It took about a lap of the field backwards for Blossom to relax and soften which was interesting to watch as I have never asked her to keep going for as long before, and I guess this has taught her that she can stop on a brace.

We then talked about circling game and done some trouble shooting on this game some of the problems we came up with where, horse breaking gait, stopping, falling in on the circle, leaning on the rope, looking out of the circle.
Jackie asked me to give us a little demo of Blossom circling, as she tends to lean on the rope and look out of the circle. After watching a couple of laps each way Jackie then played with her for a demo for us to show how we could improve Blossom’s circling game. What she basically done as every time Blossom turned her head out of the circle she gave her a little feel on the rope, and put some energy towards her rips to get her attention back and get her looking where she was going. I always thought it was an unconfident thing with Blossom and thought it would come with time the more confident she became. But watching the difference Jackie made with her was amazing! It wasn’t long before Blossom became relaxed and started lowering her head and looking on the circle.
We then got another demo from Jackie with another students horse who broke gait on the circle and didn’t want to go. It was really good fun to watch as pretty quick Jackie got the horses energy up and she became really playful and full of energy. It was like watching a totally different horse, how cool!

We then got the chance to go and play with circles, what a difference it made to Blossom using the technique Jackie used on her, the circles were so soft and I could see how much more relaxed she was.

We then got a demo on sideways with a students horse – I found this very interesting as I noticed from watching Jackie that I use to high a phase on Blossom, which is then causing us problems. I have basically been starting with the phase Jackie uses for phase 4, oops!!
When it came to us having a go, I found I have to go for a lot longer than I have been before Blossom finds relaxation. Before the course if I got a couple of steps sideways without lots of brace I let her stop – but on the course I found I actually had to get her to go sideways round the outside of the honeycomb before she found relaxation. How interesting!

We finished the day with a overview of what we had covered that day and Jackie answered any questions anybody had – what an amazing first day, lots for me to lick and chew over tonight.